Cloning A Gold Master With IBM Wave for z/VM

Richard Lewis is an IBM employee who is part of the IBM Washington System Center, Advanced Technical Support Organization supporting z/VM and Linux on System z. This is part two of a multi-post series on IBM Wave for z/VM, a systems management GUI for z/VM .This software promises to simplify the task of administering Linux guests running on z/VM. To read part one, see https://ibm.biz/BdDaBv .

Many customers who will be installing and implementing IBM Wave will no doubt have an existing z/VM and Linux for System z environment. In this context the customer most likely will already have “gold master” Linux for System z images that are cloned to create new virtual machines to be used for applications and middleware that run the business. IBM Wave easily integrates into an environment such as this by providing the capability to identify an existing virtual machine as a “prototype”.

Marking a virtual machine in this manner causes IBM Wave to ensure that the virtual machine will not be logged on to the system, and also to create a prototype directory entry to be used when creating clones of this virtual machine.

Before designating a virtual machine in this manner, it is a good idea to execute the “init for wave” process so that all clones created from this base will already have that step completed.

Once this setup work is done, creating a clone from this base is as simple as right-clicking on the prototype icon and selecting “clone from this prototype”.

Before the clone process begins you will have an opportunity to specify the name for the new virtual machine, the z/VM password for the new virtual machine, and network connectivity for the new server.

The information provided will then be used by IBM Wave to create a series of background tasks to complete the clone process. These tasks consist of creating the new virtual machine directory entry, and then copying the minidisks from the base image to the new image. You can follow the progress of these tasks through the log viewer.

When the clone process is completed, you will have a new server that can be activated and populated with applications and or middleware.

One step you might want to do at this point is to specify the group this new virtual machine should be part of. The topic of projects and grouping is quite powerful and will be the subject of another blog on IBM Wave, but in this figure, we are assigning a Site Defined Group named MyClones.

To activate the new virtual machine you simply right click on the icon and select Activate. A window to confirm this and begin the process will be displayed.

With just a few clicks and a few minutes of time you have provisioned a new server all without knowing the many individual z/VM commands to execute the process. When your new server is up and running it will already be ready for management by IBM Wave, so you will be able to gather performance data from it, as well as add resources when needed.